Space Oddities: 8 of the Strangest Exoplanets

Twenty years after scientists confirmed the first planets beyond our solar system, there are more than 900 confirmed exoplanets and thousands of additional candidates. Some of the worlds out there are just plain out-there.

The Pink Planet

The Pink Planet

Official Name: GJ 504b

Distance: 57.3 light-years

Why it's weird: At first glance, the planet appears covered in a dark shade of pink. The planet's still glowing from the heat of its formation, thus causing the uncommon planetary hue, according to NASA. But beyond its peculiar magenta coloring, this particular world has scientists reconsidering how planets and solar systems form. Although the Pink Planet is about the same size as Jupiter, it's much farther from its parent star than many astronomers believed such a huge planet could form—debris was believed to be too sparse to form such large celestial bodies. At 43.5 AU (1 AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance from the Earth to the sun), GJ 504b is farther from its star than even Neptune is from the sun. Yet there it is in all its pink glory.

Methuselah

Methuselah

Official Name: PSR 1620-26 b

Distance: 12,400 light-years

Why it's weird: Methuselah, a well-known old timer from the Bible, is an apt description for this planet: It's really old. In fact, it's too old. The planet's age is about 13 billion years, almost three times as old as Earth. This means that the planet formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang, a time when astronomers thought planets couldn't form due to lack of materials needed to create a planet's core. It seems the galaxy was an efficient world-maker even in its infancy.